I really didn’t want this to be my first post of 2015. I wanted it to be my review of the KHD X3 espresso 3D printed chastity device. I wrote the bulk of that yesterday but need to give it the final Thumperesque spit and polish before posting it. That was what I meant to be doing right now. Instead, I’m doing this.
Before I really get going, I’d like to warn you that if you’re the type who doesn’t like it when I rant at ignorant fucktards, move along. If you’d rather your new year start off with positivity and good will toward men, find something else to read. If you want to pretend like the world isn’t filled with hate and intolerance wrapped in the blessings of the “love of god” and that I should just let it roll off my back and move along, then you should. Because I’m fucking sick of it. And I’m pissed that the hatred of others has caused me to feel so much anger and hate on a day I’d rather not.
Reader Amy is back after saying she never would be with the following comment left on my last post (don’t bother looking, I’ve spammed it):
Happy New Year, thumper. I read you nonstop and want to say thank you. You’ve helped me keep my husband at a level he should be for 3 years now. I have to say I was one of the worried ones earlier this year when the blog went more gay, but very glad you are no longer talking about that stuff and that guy hear. I know this may be not be pc, but the straight people need you. Have s great 2015.
I was immediately offended by this comment but Belle told me to let it go. So I did. I ignored it. Then Drew sent me the comment she left on his site:
Just a note to say happy new year and that I hope 2015 is the year you find God and quit tempting men to change and cheat on their wives.
I also hope you’ll realize marriage is between a man and woman and not Adam and Steve. Please quit saying you are married as that’s just not right.
Peace to you and I hope you find your way.
Even on a good day, this would piss me the fuck off. But today wasn’t one of those days because I’ve been thinking a lot about this:
That’s from the suicide note of a transgendered teenager named Leelah Alcorn. She wrote that and then threw herself in front of a semi. When I read things like what Amy wrote that some would tell me come from a good place because they mean well and others suggest I should just delete and let go I think of kids like Leelah. The hundreds of thousands of kids like Leelah, some whom will kill themselves but most of whom will live in pain and misery because of their parents who speak from the same place as good old Amy. Her and others like her doing real and serious harm to innocent lives every fucking day by cloaking their ignorance and intolerance in their selective reading of a mythical fairy tale we’ve all agreed has some significance and isn’t the wholesale manufacture of a group of old men trying to control the actions and lives of pretty much everyone else rather than the word of god as they told us it was. The ignorant and hypocritical people like Amy who decide one part of the bible means something really important about homosexuals and people of non-standard gender identification but choose to ignore the parts about rape being a perfectly valid pretext to marriage and all the pro-slavery stuff and how we shouldn’t eat shellfish or mix the fibers we wear and on and fucking on because it doesn’t really matter what the book says as long as you’re using it as your cudgel as you hew through young lives and sit in abject judgment of others whose only crime is trying to live in love and find happiness. Because fucking GOD.
Once upon a time, I was one of those kids. I was living with my dad and his wife after high school and my on-again, off-again boyfriend (the one I’ve mentioned who has the wonderful cock) slept over and he fucked me (and guess what, Amy — I liked it A LOT). My dad heard and maybe even saw that without my knowledge and confronted me with being a homosexual shortly afterward. I denied it on a technicality. I didn’t think I was gay. Not like the boy who fucked me. Not like my father thought when he said the word. So I said no, I wasn’t.
My father, being a god-fearing, bible study teaching fellow who — if you pressed him — thought the gays deserved their AIDS, suggested we do family counselling at his church. I didn’t want to but I had nowhere else to live (my mother was out of the question at the time) so I figured I’d go along with it in hopes we could address other issues in our relationship. However, after a half dozen sessions or so in which he and his wife didn’t show up, it became clear to me this wasn’t family counselling, it was Thumper counselling. I’m fortunate that I was already an adult and the counsellor at the church was an OK guy and I wasn’t an underage kid like Leelah and the church wasn’t full of radical Christians with a piss-poor comprehension of the sciences of genetics and psychology. So I stopped going. Soon thereafter, I moved out of my dad’s house and our relationship was seriously strained until I became engaged with Belle. Perhaps he thought, like most Christians, that I “chose” to be with a woman rather than men.
The other day, I quoted something Dan Savage said in his recent Playboy interview.
In countries like Uganda, leaders have this easy way to assert their moral superiority: hating gay people in the same way shitty, fucked-up Christians in America do. Putin is very blunt about this. It’s how they prove their moral superiority to the West. They don’t have to take better care of their citizens, they don’t have to have a functioning democracy, they don’t have to have a decent environment, they don’t have to have a justice system that works. They just have to hate gay people really hard and they’re better than the United States, better than Canada, better than France. It’s exactly like the Christians. They don’t have to stop masturbating, stop having premarital sex, stop drinking, stop getting divorced and remarried. All they have to do to be good Christians is hate gay people. “I don’t have to keep my dick out of anybody; I just have to hate you and where you’re putting your dick.”
Emphasis mine.
Reader Deadrody replied:
This: “…like the Christians. They don’t have to stop masturbating, stop having premarital sex, stop drinking, stop getting divorced and remarried. All they have to do to be good Christians is hate gay people” is nonsense. I’m actually about 100% sure that there is no such person on earth. Anyone claiming anything similar to that, is not remotely a “Christian”.
Making a caricature of 80% of the American public is not useful, helpful, or true.
I’m sorry, Deadrody (and not only because you’re dead), but look up. It’s not a caricature. Those would would carry the banner of “Christian” in this country are exactly as Savage said they are. They’re like Amy. They’re like my dad. And, might I add, as someone who very much does not count themselves as a Christian, if you don’t like the caricature, do something about it. Fight it. Call it out as the intolerant ravings that it is. It’s all done in your name and if you choose to be silent on the subject then it’s perfectly understandable that people like me would assume you’re all the same absent evidence to the contrary. Unfair? Maybe. Prejudiced? Perhaps. But you don’t need to be an African slave in Mississippi or Native American on the North Dakota plains to understand their instinctual fear and suspicion of the white man. It’s just human nature.
So, to conclude Amy, Drew is not tempting me. I advertised for someone like him. I did. I started it. All he did was raise his hand. And I’m not cheating on my wife. She knows all about my relationship with him. She approves of it. And “marriage” is a legal construct, not something you get to define in your narrow head, and right now in the majority of the country, Drew and Axel’s marriage is as valid as mine and Belle’s. Get used to it.
A great man once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” I think it bends a bit faster when the simple and narrow minded either don’t procreate or do so in an environment where their children turn out better than their parents anyway. The arc is bending fast on this one, Amy. Faster every day. And all I can hope is that words like mine will help it bend just a tiny bit faster.
Even if, it won’t be fast enough for Leelah. And not fast enough for the thousands of other kids who are burdened with parents like you right now, today. Until the day comes when every person in this country, child or adult, is free to live and love the way they were born to without worry of people like you, Amy, I will NOT let your kind of bullshit roll off my back. I will NOT let it go. It’s evil. It hurts people. And it’s everything that is wrong with our world.
Hi,
I have followed your blog for some time now. I found it whilst looking for answers and reasons for my own sexuality. It helped enormously and my partner and I now enjoy a relationship beyond anything I could imagine before. Yours was one of many resources I turned to and your honesty and openness was so helpful.
I identify as hetrosexual, but have no qualms about gay men, lesbians or transgenders. I don’t seek information out about it and as such, I mainly skip the articles on Drew. It’s not for any other reason than it’s something that doesn’t pique my interest. Your chastity, submission and (apparent) desire for Belle to seek a lover are things that interest me greatly and those articles certainly have me reading with eyes wide open. Hands off though, as I’m generally locked up…
What bigots don’t seem to realise is that people are, well, just people. Live and let live. Get out more. Just open your eyes. And if you don’t like what you see, then move on. But don’t sit and write hateful speeches about the evils of one type of relationship. And who is Amy kidding? She’s reading a sexual blog about a man, his desires to submit to his wife and remain in chastity. He’s got piercings for crying out loud…Not exactly conventional Christianity is it?
Take care, have a great New Year.
Great post.
In truth, I laughed when I saw Amy’s comment on Drew’s blog. The picture of her gasping and pearl clutching while devouring every word in horror amused me because I know that you and Drew are grown men who aren’t impacted by hateful words coming out of ignorance.
But you are 100% right: It’s not amusing. Not even a little bit. It’s dangerous and damaging and worst of all, it’s not isolated, and it hits at those who are most vulnerable. You are right to call it out for the hate it is. Well done.
Ferns
Add to that “and getting sopping wet and then feeling guilty for it and praying to God to strengthen her against the viles of the devil”
You sir, are full of correctness and win!
I wish more people (myself included) were capable of speaking up when this kind stupid dogma rears it’s ugly head.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down. x
“Those would would carry the banner of “Christian” in this country are exactly as Savage said they are. ”
I’m sorry, you’re wrong. To be a “Christian” is not to act that way at all. Anyone can CLAIM to be Christian. To be one is something entirely different.
Frankly, you may not like hearing it, but being intolerant of ALL CHRISTIANs is really not any better than “Christians” that are intolerant of anyone that is gay or transgender, or anything else. Hate is hate, no matter WHO is the one displaying their intolerance.
Regret, revenge, bitterness, whatever emotion or experience you think gives you permission to be intolerant of others – it doesn’t. THAT is what being an actual Christian is about.
Again, you’ve chosen to read my (and Savage’s) criticisms of th worst and most vocal Christians as a denouncement of all Christians. Regardless, if a Christian doesn’t denounce the bullshit of those like Amy they’re no better in my book.
Right now, today, Christians are killing gay and transgendered kids. Those who survive live in misery. That doesn’t happen the other way around.
Isn’t Amy a hypocrite? I admit it’s been many years since I had to study a bible, but I don’t remember anything in there about men being subjugated by women. Quite the contrary, in fact.
you enjoy all the cock you can handle. May it be forever hard and spilling its seed. May Belle enjoy the fruits of your labours with it.
She, like so many like her, have perfected the selective reading of their manual. Some of the words of god are worth following, others not. Apparently.
I am actually real fucking glad that’s the case. Not that she selects some of the hateful parts. But that, by and large, people who are religious pick and choose a few things, and are in it more for the community than living God’s Word 100 percent. For when you take abso-fucking-lutely everything in there dead seriously, you end up with wild-eyed, raving mad-men. I’m glad most folk don’t go there.
First off, thank you for your well worded response to a very narrow minded person. While I, myself am a straight female who grew up in the Bible-belt of the United States (with that area’s subsequent upbringing), I have never understood why people couldn’t just live and let live. In fact, my first thought after reading this post was, “How is hatred able to disguise itself as love?” But I realized the answer to my own question as I was thanking you for responding to Amy instead letting the comment go.
I realized that ‘letting it go’ is typically the appropriate response to someone verbalizing their hatred because the hatred they are spewing is in fact, a sickness in themselves that no amount of reason, logic, or push-back can cure. It is also the answer to my question; the disease (hatred) disguises itself as the cure (love) so that its host doesn’t recognize it for the harmful virus that it is. And in keeping with the virus analogy, that is also why the host feels the desire to spread the hatred around. The host (bigot) is doing the bidding of the virus and attempting to infect others.
The sad part is that curing someone of their hatred is next to impossible because the cure has to come from within themselves. Hence, while I also do not identify as a Christian nor do I like the idea of organized religion in general, I don’t think the problem is so much Christianity as it is the hatred that lives inside of people. I have a sneaky suspicion that even had the bible never existed, the hate would have manifested and directed itself at SOMETHING.
I won’t go into it at length (because this is a comment section, not my own personal blog lol), but I personally believe that the irrational hatred people like Amy harbor stems from something deep inside themselves and the only way they know how to deal with it is to aim it at other people. Which is why logic and reason don’t work; why ‘letting it go’ is typically the appropriate response; why the cure has to come from inside; and why all we can do is try not to be infected by it ourselves.
So to close, I just wanted to thank you for your blog and sharing your experiences with us despite the negativity it makes you vulnerable to, and thank you for meeting that negativity head-on. And I hope that in facing it, you don’t lose sight of the positive the new year has to offer, nor the positive your blog posts bring to others.
Happy New Year Thumper 🙂
“Let it go” is a two sided blade…
1) “Let it go” when some adult is consensually doing something to himself or to other consensual adults, and that can range from applying chastity to yourself, to applying it to others, to homosexual people, to people into BDSM and much more… they don’t harm anyone. “Let them live and mind your own business” should be the motto.
2) “Let it go” when anyone is abusing another unwilling living being, being it because of religion, sexuality, or whatever else, is just WRONG. Be it children or adults, but even more with children of course.
“Let it go” is in my mind not dissociable from “consensual”. It’s not something universal.
You know how I responded on Drews blog so I’m not going to get into it here.
However, I do want to say, that we ARE Christian and even in our church the congregation is a mixed lot who all love God and believe in the forgiveness of sins blah blah blah. We have young, old, tattooed, gay and who knows what else in attendance every week. We all love and care about each other no matter our situation or sexual orientation.
I’m glad you didn’t let it go but I am also glad you took the time to breathe and write this in response rather than reacting.
<3
I saw the comment on Drew’s blog earlier, but I wasn’t in a place where I could comment. So I am leaving this here for both of you, as well as for any other WordPress blogger who may find it useful:
There are two easy ways to administratively manage comments so that hateful ones do not appear on your posts.
1) From your dashboard, mouse over ‘settings’ on the menu in the left side bar, and click ‘discussion’.
2) Scroll down to where it says, “Before a comment appears:” and, if you wish to moderate on a comment-by-comment basis, check the box that says “Comment must be manually approved.”
-OR-
3) Scroll to the very bottom of the Discussion Settings page to where it says “Comment Blacklist” and enter the offender’s user name, IP address, email, or URL. (Those pieces of information are all available to you on the comment notification email WP sends to you.)
4) Save changes.
Douchebaggery cannot be eliminated, but it can definitely be contained. 🙂
Happy New Year!
There’s only one god… and that is death.
And to death we say: not today.
Religions all are just worse than the other.
Well fuck… I thought Amy was gone!! People like her make me sick to my stomach. Why is she still reading your blogs if she doesn’t agree with your lifestyles? There are other blogs regarding male chastity written by straight men, if that is what she’s interested in. I hate that she has targeted you & Drew. Why won’t she just go away?!
I was practically in tears as I finished reading the excerpt from Leelah’s letter. I don’t understand how a parent could treat their child that way!
Sorry you had to start out 2015 dealing with crap like this!
if you’re the type who doesn’t like it when I rant at ignorant fucktards, move along. If you’d rather your new year start off with positivity and good will toward men, find something else to read.
These two things aren’t mutually exclusive. This post is a rant at ignorant fucktards, and it is ALSO starting off the year with positivity and good will toward all human beings (except, perhaps, the ignorant fucktards).
Amy? She’s an ignorant fucktard, and while I have no real hopes that people like this change, my hope for her is that she learns to STFU with her hateful bullshit.
Thumper, I wasn’t going to respond to this but after reading your response about 27 times, I absolutely have to respond if to only just to say thank you.
So, thank you for sharing your past and, on behalf of Axel, thank you for stating so clearly that our marriage is just as wonderfully dysfunctional and legal as all the other ones around the world. I’ve told you that reading your blog for years actually made me like myself and my kinks more and, well, you as a friend have absolutely done that too.
Also, Axle and I are far stronger from taking a lead from you and Belle (as weird as that sounds) and I know we are just one of many, many couples who have done so.
Mrs. Fever, I purposely approved that comment because, frankly, I still have that naive side to me that thinks she might read responses and change her mind, but I know better in reality. While I suspect this is the Amy in Alabama from the past, we really don’t know, but, assuming so, I also want to defend the Southern stereotype she presents because life down here is not that judgmental. We just have our extremists like everywhere else. That said, unfortunately, they tend to speak and right in a dialect that curses us all image wise (yes, Thumper, I did spell it that way on purpose).
I hate that this was your first 2015 post and I hate that she was my first 2015 comment, but I hope the positives that have come out of the comments and direct messages have made you realize the good that you do with your honesty is powerful.
Finally, I agree with Amy that straight people need you, but so do gay people, left handed people, smart people, stupid people and all the other groups too (although the jury is still out on Giants fans).
D
Giants fans!? Oh shit, boy, don’t go getting me started.
Oh you silly boys are lucky this NYer is not a giants fan haha 🙂
Baseball Giants, not the ones left in NYC. Or Jersey or wherever they play.
Haha them either 🙂 I realized that after I hit reply that the Dodgers fan was referring to baseball!
Why does Amy continue to stick around, read, and comment?
This possibility came to mind: “Amy” is a gay or bi guy, submissive, married, father, closeted, still going to church for the sake of appearances, and desperate to be locked in chastity–by a man.
But please keep commenting, Amy. We need to see all of the hatred and ignorance, of what may be the majority of people in this country, who just can’t get it that there are people, many people (you’d be surprised), who aren’t vanilla heterosexuals. Show us your ignorance so we can call you on your bullshit.
Remember, freedom of religion also means freedom of no religion.
My wife and I agreed in the beginning to allow our kids to love whoever they want. We would teach them from the beginning that we support any direction they want to take in life, be it of the same sex or not. I am a firm believer to follow your dreams and to be happy. If a man or a woman loves someone of the same sex, who is anyone to tell them they are wrong. I have gay friends and gay family members and all of them are accepted for who they are. My kids will be treated the same way!
You’ve changed my mind with this piece, Thumper. I used to think “well it’s easy to spam these comments, why even give them air time? Who is that helping?”
You make an excellent point about Leelah. Okay, she saw the “it gets better” campaign and that didn’t help enough, and still – every little bit of push-back may help someone. I get it now.
Her call out of It Gets Better was especially cutting, I thought.
Yeah it was. She was so, so close. Another 3-5 years, maybe. I keep thinking that maybe, if she hadn’t been so isolated, if there was a trans-man or trans-woman locally to be friends with, she might have believed that the light at the end of the tunnel is not the oncoming train.
Hi Thumper;
The minute I started reading your “rant” this quote came to mind.
“All it takes for Evil to prevail in this world is for enough good men to do nothing.” Edmund Burke
Your a good man Thumper, thanks for taking the time to “suss it out” and blog on it….even if it sucked writing about it. I always thought that Churchill said this and maybe he did since this is a paraphrase of Edmund Burke’s actual quote…Google brought up a different quote by a man that I never heard of…also relevant to both the “evil” and the understanding of Christianity by some of your readers. For full disclosure, I was raised Catholic, but now consider myself a spiritualist …only because I don’t “believe” in religion anymore than I believe in Santa Claus. Beliefs are thoughts that lead to the “suspension of reality”.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer (4 February 1906 – 9 April 1945) was a German Lutheran pastor, theologian, participant in the German resistance movement against Nazism and founding member of the Confessing Church.
“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The Righteousness of Christ—Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“It was the error of Israel to put the law in God’s place, to make the law their God and their God a law.”
Not sure if you know this, but Israeli law in fact does include the tenets of the Torah as part of their civil law…..damn….that’s scary…but true.
Best, justplaying
Hi, Thumper! It’s the writer who finds the psychology behind all of this incredibly fascinating, and the one who used your blog as research for a character.
I’m a Christian, though I’m starting to prefer follower of Christ because I don’t want to be lumped in with idiots like Amy. People like her piss me off to no end. She may claim Christianity, but she does NOT behave as we’re instructed to behave. She is an embarrassment to my faith. People like her have done so much harm to the LGBT community, and to many other people groups, and heaped more pain and hurt on a group of people who are already going through more pain and hurt than any person should have to deal with.
The commenter you quoted from the Dan Savage article is actually correct on his next to last sentence. Unfortunately, most people claiming to be Christians don’t act like one, which means they’re not really Christians. Being one is a change in the heart, which works its way out into what you say and do. If your actions aren’t born out of love for your fellow man, and a desire to help, you can go around screaming until your lungs fall out how you’re a Christian. But you’re not. Unfortunately, these people will never acknowledge they’re not acting like Christians because that would mean taking God seriously and actually doing what He says we should do. It would also require reading the Bible for themselves, from beginning to end, instead of following the convenient parts. Being a true follower of Christ requires being uncomfortable at times and having preconceived notions challenged on a regular basis.
It’s easier to hate someone because they’re different than show Christ’s love to them.
Do I believe homosexuality is a sin? Yes, I do. But it’s between you and God. Not you and me. My job, as a follower of Christ, is to show His love to everyone I encounter. REGARDLESS of who they sleep with or where a guy puts his dick. Those in the LGBT community need that love the most. The greatest commandment Christ gave us is to love one another. It has no qualifiers. None. One another. That means EVERYONE. Not just those I approve of morally. Do I always live up to this? No, I don’t. I’m not perfect. But I’d rather die trying than be stuck in Amy’s mindset.
Amy, if you read this, shame on you! You are not a true follower of Christ, because you don’t show His love to those you meet. If Jesus came to earth today, the gay people are the ones He’d eat with, the ones He’d love on the most, the ones He’d spend time with. Because they’re hurting and they need it.
Amy, people like you are the ones He called a pit of vipers and told they’d have no place in His kingdom. Jesus’s strongest condemnation was for people like you. Not people like Thumper, Drew, and Axel, and every other kinky non-traditional person who reads this blog or leaves a comment. Jesus would go out to eat with Drew and Axel. I’m not so sure He’d go out to eat with you.
Thumper, what was done to you by your father and that “counseling” was wrong and was not someone acting as Christ’s heart and hands on earth. I’m so sorry you were hurt that way. What happened to Leelah breaks my heart, as well. No kid should have to go through that.
And now I’m going back to my bi alien in the current book I’m editing so he can get things worked out with his wife after he almost cheated on her with his former boyfriend. Thumper, the glimpse I’ve gotten into the workings of the kind of bisexual mind, thanks to you and your blog, helped me make this character real. Thank you.
Hi Purple. I’m Drew.
I saw your comment and texted Thumper to ask if he would mind if I replied (since this is his blog and you addressed this to him. He said yes, so, hello).
First, I want to say thank you for the response and your feelings about the letter that Amy sent. I really, really want to say that, but, to be bluntly honest, I am not sure I can.
That said, I really do feel like you intended for this to be a positive response and, I think in your head it is, but I would ask that you read it again from my point of view because in this wonderfully defensive letter addressed to a bigot from Alabama, you have made me feel horrible because, yet again, someone I don’t know is telling me I am a sinner for just being who I am and that you do not approve of me morally.
Purple, today alone I have likely committed at least 217 sins. In fact, if you were to consider this blog pornography, which I am sure some do, let’s make that 218.
However, waking up this morning and being who I am, who I was born as, and who God made me was not one of those 218 sins. Again, I think your intent was good, but the fact that you have to point out that “Jesus would go out to eat with Drew and Axel” is a tad demeaning.
I am not going to argue religion or what is a sin and what is not, but just for context, I have a large extended family and, on both my Father and my Mother’s side of the family, every youngest child is gay. I see that just as the fact that both of my grandfathers were bald. That is a genetic factor that is proven to skip a generation which explains why my fully follicle’d Father and Mother stare at me, their bald son every Sunday when I visit. Those are just two facts, but again, I am not going to get into that argument.
I need to tell you that your letter hit me much harder than Amy’s. Amy is the known bigot and, like it or not, Amy doesn’t hide her intentions.
The good people who defend every gay man or woman and then vote against our rights because “it’s a sin” are the ones who scare me way more than Amy. I liken it to a sleeper cell in many ways although I am very sure you would argue against my logic. As a reference, Axel and I used to have someone in our lives who we were very close to and who we shared many a meal with until about two years ago in October. The change in this status happened one night when we, the designated drivers, dropped them off at their house one night after a dinner only to discover a sign in their yard against Proposition Whatever that would further block Axel and I from being recognized as a married couple, keep us from adopting children, and even from being able to jointly transfer our own property to each other in the event of a tragedy.
That sign destroyed a friendship because, in that moment, Axel and I learned that they operated by a friendship principle they called “hate the sin, love the sinner” and that each night and every Sunday (after drinking the night before) they prayed for us because they were so sad that “they would not see us in heaven”.
We have not shared a meal since. Of course, that has less to do with their condemnation of us and more to do with their divorce a year later when it was revealed that the male half of that couple had “accidently” fathered a child with an assistant at his firm during a trip to New Orleans and that the female half of the couple had a nasty Xanax addiction.
Finally, I have to ask, if you find me to be a sinner by birth, is the fact that Thumper and I each go outside of our marriage, even with permission, not worthy of a mention too? Is that different? In addition, you mention your book about a bisexual alien. Is bisexuality not morally wrong to you too? And don’t get me started on Aliens.
So, all that said, if you, Thumper and I were together, would Jesus eat with us too or just me?